Disruption
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The Power of a Transformative Idea: Presenting Singly

May 31

In the job of venture capital, one of the greatest moments I have found is hearing an entrepreneur present a truly transformative idea. We hear exciting ideas all day long, expressed with passion and unwavering belief. But a few times a year, perhaps, I have been lucky enough to hear an idea that is unquestionably an enormously important vision of the way the world should evolve. Over the course of last summer, two entrepreneurs separately presented to us their big vision of personal data and it, well, rocked my world. We invited one of them, Jason Cavnar, to take a seat in our Palo Alto office (in what we call “The Quarry”) to start fleshing it out. He introduced us to Jeremie Miller, the revered founder of open source XMPP/Jabber, who saw the world the same way. The two combined visions and forces, and Singly was born.

After about nine months of team-building, coding and developer community work, Singly is starting to emerge and present their vision for the future of personal data. I am happy I can share it publicly and get your feedback.

It is clear that all online experiences are becoming social. To me, this means sites and apps become more participatory. That is, we interact with them in personal ways and leave some data about ourselves there: we comment, rate, share, add friends, search, personalize, filter, select, check-in, post, etc. Right now, our personal data is spread across, probably, 20 – 30 sites and apps like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, Netflix, Flickr, etc. Soon, as everything becomes social, our data will be spread across literally thousands of sites. That data is very powerful and useful. However, it is vey hard to pull back together. Over the past year or so, I have seen literally hundreds of entrepreneurs developing apps which utilize subsets of this data to provide value to users. The problem for them is they spend 4-6 months writing code to aggregate, normalize and clean up the data they need from a few services before writing the code that is valuable and differentiated. They would benefit from a centralized place where our data lives.

The other side of this coin is that we are spreading lots of data about ourselves all over the place. Some of us might care to know what we have spread out there, where it lives, and what developers are doing with that data. Enter Singly.

Singly began life as the open source Locker Project. TLP, available here for developers, is a container for personal data. It contains the core locker as well as a slew of open source connectors and collectors. Those connecters attach to (soon) hundreds of services to copy our personal data, in real-time, back into the locker. Collectors clean and normalize that data. Singly puts a nice API on top of all this data along with a permissioning and authentication interface. Singly also will offer hosted lockers in the way WordPress.com offers a hosted version of the open source WordPress platform. You can see a world where developers can start writing an app knowing, provided the consumer lets them, they have access to normalized and complete personal data for their users.

This vision offers a future where people *do* control their own data, where innovation can be fully unlocked for thousands of developers, allowing great new apps to appear for consumers, and creates an interface point for brands to interact with people and their information under a trust framework humans can understand.

The team has been making some exciting announcements this last week. Here are a few things to check out if you are so inclined:

[unordered_list style="bullet"]

  • A vision document from Jeremie Miller
  • A blog post from the team announcing the effort
  • Matt Zimmerman’s announcement that he is leaving Ubuntu to join the team
  • The Locker Project: website, GitHub, Twitter, blog, IRC (#lockerproject on FreeNode)[/unordered_list]

Incidentally, others have discussed a slightly different version of this future. Some believe aggregating personal data will lead to a world where marketers will offer to pay you for your data. I don’t see this happening. I cannot see consumers getting into the business of selling their data to marketers so they can see personalized advertising. Instead, I believe marketers will be encouraged to offer value to us in exchange for access to our data. The best example of this today might be the Nike Plus app. Nike gets access to highly personal health and wellness data in exchange for providing great utility around my exercise schedule. In any case, we know advertising is becoming more personal and is more effective when based on our social data. The Singly permissioning interface will encourage marketers to think a bit more like developers.

Author David Pakman
Category Big Data, Startups, Venture Capital
Comments 5 Comments

Building a Franchise

May 05

It’s hard to build a franchise. You don’t get points for trying, but success brings great rewards. Venrock is a firm that has multiple franchises, certainly in core technology with investments in companies like Apple and Intel. In Healthcare, Venrock’s success is somewhat unparalleled. In Energy, our portfolio brings accolades. In the Valley, our internet team has enjoyed great success with companies like Adify, Castlight, Tudou and new investments in RedBeacon, SocialShield and CloudFlare. A firm with a rich history has much to stand on. In internet and digital media, particularly in New York, Venrock aims to be one of the best. With investments in leading NYC internet companies AppNexus, Media6Degrees and Smartling, I think we are well on our way there. To aid in our pursuit of finding the best entrepreneurs and building the very best and most successful companies, we are proud to welcome Marissa Campise to our team. Marissa joins us with a fantastic experience set in internet and digital media investing, first with the indubitable Howard Lindzon and then with Alan Patricof’s impressive firm Greycroft.

Of course, VCs don’t build franchises, it’s the entrepreneurs we partner with who do. And bringing on Marissa to help meet more of those great entrepreneurs is a tip of the cap to the truth of that statement.

Entrepreneurs, if you haven’t yet met Marissa, I encourage you to do so. You can reach her at mc [at] venrock [dot] com or follow her on twitter @marissa. She’ll have a lot more to say in the coming weeks.

More about her here:

Venrock’s Technology Franchise Adds Marissa Campise

Expanded Internet Team Builds on Over 40 Years in New York

 

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – May 5, 2011) – Venrock, the premier venture capital firm originally established as the venture arm of the Rockefeller family, today announced that Marissa Campise has joined the firm as a vice president. She will focus on internet and digital media investments from Venrock’s New York office, where the firm’s growing New York City internet portfolio includes leading companies such as AppNexus, Media6Degrees and Smartling. Campise joins a bi-coastal technology team, which includes David Pakman and Mike Brooks in New York; Mike Tyrrell in Cambridge, MA; and Brian Ascher, Steve Goldberg, Dev Khare, and Ray Rothrock in Palo Alto, CA.

“The entrepreneurial energy in New York is explosive and this community is creating some of the most exciting new companies around,” said David Pakman, partner at Venrock. “Venrock has had roots in New York since 1969, and today we add Marissa Campise to the team to solidify our position as a leading New York City internet and digital media investor. Her respect among the entrepreneurial community is exceptional and her experience and passion make her a great fit with our team. We are thrilled to welcome her to Venrock.”

Campise joins Venrock from Greycroft Partners, where she was a principal in their New York office and observed on the boards of Netsertive and Klout. Prior to joining Greycroft, Campise worked in a similar role evaluating investment opportunities for Howard Lindzon. She also previously held finance positions with Deloitte & Touche and Matrix USA, LLC, and is a graduate of Yale.

“I find myself in a very exciting place — New York, technology innovation and now Venrock,” said Marissa Campise, vice president at Venrock. “Venrock has a rich history and I look forward to working with this amazing team to identify and help build the next generation of game-changing internet companies.”

About Venrock

Venrock is a premier venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; and Cambridge, MA. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues an eight-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. Having invested $2.6 billion in over 450 companies resulting in 128 IPOs and 137 M&As over the past 40 years, Venrock’s investment returns place it among the top tier venture capital firms that have achieved consistently superior performance. With a primary focus on technology, healthcare, and energy, portfolio companies have included Adify, Adnexus Therapeutics, Apple Computer, Athenahealth, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, StrataCom, and Vontu. For more information, please visit Venrock’s website at www.venrock.com and follow the firm on Twitter @venrock.

 

Author David Pakman
Category Venture Capital
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